The forgottens, another 2015 list !
Posted: December 29, 2015 Filed under: Photobooks, Photography 7 CommentsThe year is ending and many lists of best books have already been published. Thanks to Olga Yatskevitch, Marc Feustel and Laurence Vecten for their compilations. Books listed are no surprises, they’re good and deserved to be enlighten. My little contribution will not be to list best books but just to point out 12 books that really caught my attention this year and which, surprisingly, have not been mentioned anywhere so far ! Here they are in no particular order :
Hidden blood (red edition), Nozomi Iijima. She keeps on investigating her parents farm in a long term project. I am an early fan of Nozomi and in my opinion, this book is the most beautiful produced so far ! The book was produced during her exhibition at Reminders Photography Stronghold in January 2015. Self Published.
Under the skin of reality, Mario Giacomelli. Probably the most beautiful book dedicated to Giacomelli’s abstraction work which is not so well known. And I just don’t understand why this book has not be mentioned before this year ! Published by Schilt Publishing.
An unconditional love, Alex Ingram. In England, football is a religion and in this book, Alex just found the perfect distance to make us understand that. From children playgrounds to supporters, after some years in amateurish teams. A very good social documentary about English and football ! Self Published.
Eight stories (box set), Daniel Meadows. Daniel Meadows was a fellow photographer to Martin Parr at their debut in social photography and Daniel’s work is really strong and powerful. This is also the occasion of mentioning one of the most interesting publisher in England who during the last few years worked to highlight English photography in an affordable collection of zines. Published by Craig Atkinson for Café Royal Books.
Midlands, Martin Cregg. Does anyone really know where the Midlands are located in Ireland ? Well… No ! However this place was subject to a large funding campaign to help develop the area. Years later, after the crisis passed, what remains is emptiness and vacuity. A beautiful book about… well, almost nothing ! Self Published.
Code Unknown, Satoshi Fujiwara. Close up portraits which become abstractions. We’re so close that it becomes impossible to recognize the persons. To compare with faces by Bruce Gilden, without the irony and moquerie, thus far better. Published by Amana/IMA photobooks.
The day « she » was planted in the garden, Yahya Dehghanpour. Minutes by minutes, the funeral of famous poetess Forough Farrokhzad. Back in Iran during the sixties, the photographer follows the procession and we meet the whole intellectual Iranian society. Published by Manoosh Publication.
Mountains of wastes, Olivier Cornil. A great discovery found at Tipi Bookshop. Olivier explores an old rubber storage, alternating from grass and trees fighting with artificial hills of wastes. Hand produced with a fantastic design, it comes with a signed print ! Self Published.
Härkälä, Iikka Tolonen. If you like kaurismäki ambiances, you’ll love the book. From 1993 to 2013, the photographer returns to photograph a small community of heavy drinkers which is the main purpose in the life of those people ! Iikka Tolonen won the Nordic Dummy Award in 2014 and the book has been published by Kehrer Verlag.
Metropole, Lewis Bush. More or less a century after Fritz Lang, Lewis questions the representation of a metropole. How can we tell the frenzy, the density, the concentration ? In 15 double page photos we find an answer, walking slowly through the city till our own dissolution. Self Published.
L’intérieur de la nuit, George Shiras. Another book which remained completely out of the radars, maybe because it was a catalogue of an exhibition at Le Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris which is not considered to be included in the official photography tour. The rediscovery of a fantastic photographer who, at the end of XIXth century, shot animal at night with a… camera. Beautifully printed and published by Xavier Barral.
Casita de Turrón, Roberto Tondopó. The fairy tale of youth and puberty evocated during the teenage years of Andrea and Angel, Roberto’s nephews. A incredibly colorful story which undulates between naiveté and seriousness. Published by La Fábrica.
I wish you all a Happy New Year and I’ll be back next year with, hopefully, a few new discoveries !
who needs another photo blog 
J’adore !
Le 29 déc. 2015 à 10:46, who needs another photo blog a écrit :
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Merci !
Interesting list … merci.
My pleasure !
I like to read about photobooks that I haven’t heard of — and I haven’t hard of nine of your choices, so this is a very enjoyable blog post. I’m particularly intrigued by “The day « she » was planted in the garden”; how did you find a copy? I’d very much like to see (and perhaps buy) a copy in a bookstore. At the same time, this notion makes me feel slightly queasy: while I hope that copies of it make their way to libraries outside Japan, I — who have only ever spent three days or so in Iran, and with no other particular link to Iran — hope that as many copies as possible of a book such as this are owned, shared and viewed by Iranians.
Hi, thank you for your words !
I got the Iranian book by an Iranian friend living in Paris who returns frequently in Iran. It is almost impossible to get it outside Iran, but it is easy to find it there and many people get access to it. I understand what you mean, but it would be good to find the right balance for the book to be known, in Iran, but also elsewhere !
Cheers.
C.
Thank you for explaining. I’m happy to learn that Iranians can easily get hold of the book, and of course its language means that they can then read and understand the text. That’s unlike so many photobooks, whose photographers and publishers seem uninterested in appealing to the people who are photographed. (In many photobooks, there isn’t much text, and adding parallel text in Russian, Arabic, Vietnamese or whatever would pose only trivial design problems.) Of course there are honourable exceptions, of which Paolo Woods and Arnaud Robert’s Leta http://cphmag.com/a-tale-of-two-books/ is one of the most striking.